Other Evolutions may be Rebecca Hirsch Garcia’s debut novel, but this isn’t her first rodeo.
Her book of shorts, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds and Other Stories, is a favourite of mine. It’s filled with stories that explore the darkness inherent in humanity. Other Evolutions follows a similar dark thread as it unravels the experiences of Alma Alt.
Alma is ordinary. She grew up in the Glebe and works for the family accounting firm. But she’s also an outsider, the child of a Mexican mother and Jewish father, whose attempts to fit in both at home and in her community get horribly derailed when she loses an arm in a car crash.
I sat down with Garcia for a virtual interview to discuss Other Evolutions.
Rebecca Hirsch Garcia. Photo provided.
“This is a very lonely, lonely character,” Garcia says. “[Other Evolutions] is more for people who feel lonely, to know you’re not alone. This is a feeling other people have.”
Garcia’s first reader though, is always herself.
“The book is always for me,” she explains. “Always. It’s something I want to read. And this is something… I really looked for, for many years, and I could not find it, so I wrote it.”
Garcia skillfully escorts the reader forward and back through time to expose Alma’s messy family relationships.
“In fiction, I like watching people make mistakes, even horrible ones, ones that will affect them for years,” Garcia says.
Alma and her fictional family certainly make mistakes, mistakes that feel decidedly non-fiction and create a narrative that is almost uncomfortably real.
“Both this book and my first book, I find, aren’t 100 per cent based in reality,” Garcia says, “what I always try to keep real is the emotions. So there always is that base for — hopefully — a reader to hold onto.”
Other Evolutions deals with themes of family drama and death. It asks how we process the events of our lives without shying away from the horrible, the embarrassing, the painful.
“The book is very much about someone who is paralyzed and stifled by this fear of death, by the trauma that happens to her,” Garcia tells me. “I didn’t want to be afraid to go into the dark places of where this character wanted to be.”
“There’s so much room for surprise while you’re writing,” Garcia continues. “It’s very easy for me to write a short story, but, novel writing … You can’t hold the whole story in your head.”
This book is an unapologetic Ottawa novel. Garcia may write about it sarcastically ― Other Evolutions opens with the words, “Nothing Ever Happens in Ottawa” ― but she is quick to express her love for the city.
“We have that reputation for being boring,” Garcia says, “but everyone who lives here, anything magical that’s happened to you … it’s happened in Ottawa, so you know things happen here. It just feels so intimate and private, and I hope I captured some of that in the book.”
One magical thing that happened for Garcia was her connection with her cover artist, Elizabeth Ranger. Brought together by Garcia’s publisher, ECW Press, they discovered not only that they went to the same high school, but that they were there at the same time.
“It really is a little village,” Garcia says.
Get your copy of Other Evolutions at any Ottawa bookstore or online retailer. Learn more at ECW Press. Follow Rebecca Hirsch Garcia to discover her upcoming tour dates and her next project.
